Rails 6 - Cost risks involved while making a large video Public, hosted on AWS S3 and distributed on AWS CloudFront

user_1482055 0
Viewed 123

I have already asked this question on AWS Developer Forum but dont have any answer, hence posting the same question here to get some help.

I have a quite well organized and fast Rails 6 app where users can upload large videos(4gb)/images and also make them public to others. Its using AWS SDK for S3 upload and CloudFront to distribute and make the content available globally.All uploaded videos are transcoded into mp4,HD.Full HD videos using Input S3 bucket - MediaConvert - Lambda - Ootput S3 bucket - Cloudfront workflow.

Now my query is -

  1. As users are allowed to upload upto 4GB of videos and also can make them public, so does this feature of making large videos public will also increase the cost/billing, as the video is public and more and more people will watch it, raising concerns to more incoming request for CloudFront...Can someone correct me here?
  2. If the above point is correct and will happen, what are the ways I can make videos public without effecting the billing/cost, for example using Cache(cloudfront cache) or any other way to minimize the increasing cost.
  3. What are the ways I can allow users to share uploaded videos to share with others, without increasing the AWS billing?
amazon-cloudfront amazon-web-services amazon-s3 ruby-on-rails
3 Answers

There is no legal way to avoid the data transfer cost increase for the use case you described in AWS. Even if CloudFront cache your data, you still need to pay the CloudFront outbound data transfer cost.

user_106924930
  1. As users are allowed to upload up to 4GB of videos and also can make them public, so does this feature of making large videos public will also increase the cost/billing, as the video is public and more and more people will watch it, raising concerns to more incoming request for CloudFront...Can someone correct me here?

You are correct. You will be paying for all these outgoing data transfers.

  1. If the above point is correct and will happen, what are the ways I can make videos public without affecting the billing/cost, for example using Cache(CloudFront cache) or any other way to minimize the increasing cost.

The only way is to earn money based on such a service. So you either charge the users to view the videos, your charge the uploaded for the upload of the videos and subsequent data transfers, or you earn by advertisements on your portal. So still upload and download are free, but you somehow make your users go through a bunch of advertisement links to compensate for that. There are other ways to monetize a website, but it depends on how popular your website will become, e.g. collect user data and sell it out.

  1. What are the ways I can allow users to share uploaded videos to share with others, without increasing the AWS billing?

See point two. You have to monetize your website, or simply change its architecture. Instead of you storing all the files, let users exchange torrent links. Then the files are not stored on your account nor you incur any cost associated with data transfers.

user_2488230

I truly appreciate the time and effort of all those who tried to help me. I didnt got any answer though I was able to get quite close to what I needed in the link below - which is a blog post explaining the parameters and other relevant areas that needs to he considered while working on large videos, cost involved and how much total bit rate is viewed.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/media/frequently-asked-questions-about-the-cost-of-live-streaming/

Hope it helps someone looking for more specific answers.

user_14820550
Related